Massive quantities
of heavily contaminated water are pouring into the Pacific
Ocean, dousing workers along the way. Hundreds of huge,
flimsy tanks are leaking untold tons of highly radioactive
fluids.

At Unit #4, more than 1300 fuel rods, with more
than 400 tons of extremely radioactive material, containing
potential cesium fallout comparable to 14,000 Hiroshima
bombs, are stranded 100 feet in the air.

All
this more than 30 months after the 3/11/2011
earthquake/tsunami led to three melt-downs and at least four
explosions.

“I am aware of
three US companies with state of the art technology that
have been to Japan repeatedly and have been rebuffed by the
Japanese government,” says Arnie Gundersen, a
Vermont-based nuclear engineer focused on Fukushima.

“I
have spoken with six Japanese medical doctors who have said
that they were told not to discuss radiation induced medical
issues with their patients. None will speak out to the
press.

“Three American University professors...were
afraid to sign the UN petition to Ban Ki-Moon because it
would endanger their Japanese colloquies who they are doing
research with.”

Abe, he says (to paraphrase it
politely), might not be entirely forthcoming.

Fukushima
Daiichi is less than 200 miles from Tokyo. Prevailing winds
generally blow out to sea---directly towards the United
States, where Fukushima’s fallout was measured less than a
week after the initial disaster.

But radioactive hot spots
have already been found in Tokyo. A worst-case cloud would
eventually make Japan an uninhabitable waste-land. What it
could do to the Pacific Ocean and the rest of us downwind
approaches the unthinkable.

The Unit #4 fuel assemblies were pulled for routine
maintenance just prior to the earthquake/tsunami. An
International Atomic Energy Agency document says they were
exposed to the open air, did catch fire and did release
radiation.

Since none of the six GE-designed Daiichi
reactors has a containment over the fuel pools, that
radiation poured directly into the atmosphere. Dozens more
designed like these reactors operate in the US and around
the world.

Then corrosive sea water was dumped into the
pool.

Unit #4 was damaged in the quake, and by an
explosion possibly caused by hydrogen leaking in from Unit
#3. It shows signs of buckling and of sinking into soil
turning to mud by water flowing down from the mountains, and
from attempts to cool the cores missing from Units #1, #2
and #3.

Tokyo Electric Power and the Japanese government
may try to bring down the Unit #4 rods next month. With
cranes operated by computers, that might normally take about
100 days. But this requires manual control. Tepco says
they’ll try to do it in a year (half their original
estimate) presumably to beat the next earthquake.

But the
pool may be damaged and corroded. Loose debris is visible.
The rods and assemblies may be warped. Gundersen says
they’re embrittled and may be crumbling.

Should just one rod fall or ignite, or
buildings collapse, or cooling systems fail, radiation
levels at the site could well force all humans to leave.
Critical electronic equipment could be rendered unworkable.
The world might then just stand helpless as the radioactive fires
rage.

Gundersen long ago recommended Tepco dig a
trench filled with zeolite to protect the site from the
water flowing down from the mountains. He was told there was
not enough money available to do the job.

Now Prime
Minister Abe wants an “ice wall” to run a mile around
the site. No such wall that size has ever been built, and
this one could not be in place for at least two
years.

While most people agree that increased sugar consumption is a major cause of too many New Zealanders being overweight and obese, what we should do about this remains a matter of debate and argument. More>>

Safe to say that no-one, but no-one has had a better 2016 than Vladimir Putin. What an annus mirabilis it has been for him. Somehow, Russia got away with directly interfering in the US election process, such that a friendly oligarch is about to take up residence in the White House, rather than a genuine rival. More>>

ALSO:

We all supposedly agree that the media is going to hell in a tabloid handbasket, but the trends to the contrary can be a bit harder to spot. In his 1970s book The Right Stuff, Tom Wolfe had mocked the way the media instinctively acts as what he called The Victorian Gentleman. More>>

Fake news as reality; the inability to navigate the waters in which it swims; a weakness in succumbing to material best treated with a huge pinch of salt. That, we are told, is the new condition of the global information environment. More>>

Post-natal depression is a sly and cruel illness, described by one expert as ‘the thief that steals motherhood’, it creeps up on its victims, hiding behind the stress and exhaustion of being a new parent, catching many women unaware and unprepared. More>>

Here’s a somewhat scary headline from October 30 on Nate Silver’s 538 site, which summed up the statistical factors in play at that point: “The Cubs Have A Smaller Chance Of Winning Than Trump Does” More>>